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• • June 2, 2011 at 12:56 am #59750
    Tom Pardy

    Member

    I have just upgraded from CS4 to CS5.5 (Yah! At last!) and, for the most part, everything is smooth.

    But I have come across a strange anomaly in Illustrator and I figured this commuity of ID people would include a significant number of Illustrator users who could offer help.

    I have set the rulers to measure from the bottom left-hand corner of the document (but the same problem exists with the origin point in the default top-left position). The numbers in the rulers do not indicate positive or negative but, whereas an object on the page has a positive number for its position in CS4, suddenly they all have negative numbers (as shown in the ‘y’ co-ordinate box in the control panel.

    If I want to move an object up the page by, say, 3mm, in CS4, I click in the ‘y’ co-ordinate box at the top of the screen and type in “+3”. Illustrator does the calculation and moves the object UP the page by 3mm, which is logical and intuitive. In CS5, however, typing “+3” moves it DOWN the page by 3mm. There appears to be no problem with the ‘x’ co-ordinate.

    I have looked through all the preferences and cannot find any setting that would affect this.

    Any suggestions? Or do I have to get used to living upside down?

  • June 2, 2011 at 6:49 am #59752
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    Furry One, this is what is known in the industry as “an improvement”, because apparently non-mathematically inclined people cannot grasp the idea of the Cartesian zero-point being in the left-hand bottom corner. Even though it has been there for 15 versions and 23 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A…..llustrator), Adobe decided it'd be somehow better if it was on another position.

    Fortunately, there are a couple of undercover programmers performing Good Deeds in their own time and including their hidden messages in the software before it ships (see also “WHAT'S WITH THE ALL CAPS PANEL NAMES”), and in this thread: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/645926 the secret to reverse the reversal is revealed.

  • June 3, 2011 at 4:56 pm #59773
    Tom Pardy

    Member

    Thanks, Jongware, for your reply.

    Some of the advice in that second link helped, but some of it seemed beyond the capacity of my brain to absorb. How does one find an invisible file inside an invisible folder? By definition they cannot be seen.

    But I did pick up the idea of using global rulers rather than artboard rulers. And slowly (with use and repeated errors) I am getting used to the idea of negative meaning up rather than down.

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